Society
Sociologists can write well. So the choices from this reading list are pretty good. First up are two books which really make you think about our place in history: The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World by David Anthony and Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler. Anthony’s book is one of several that combines linguistics and paleo DNA analysis to reach back in time to a world before written histories. The story is of the Paleo Indo Europeans (PIEs) who gave much of the West and south Asia not only its language - which Nicholas Ostler describes - but also much of its genetic inheritance. Using DNA analysis it can be revealed that the PIEs spread rapidly throughout Europe, Iran, Afghanistan and the Indian subcontinent about 5000 years ago, pulled by horses on wheeled battle chariots. They killed most of the men and raped most of the women they encountered resulting in a massive genetic shift. Ostler’s book is less sinister and is a wonderful history of language development and well worth reading.
Lost Christianities by Bart D. Ehrman is one of many books about early Christianity and describes the battles that were fought by early Christians for the truth about Jesus and his relationship with God. We now think that there is only one truth, but in reality there were multiple truths and the truth we believe in now is the one that emerged victorious after centuries of in fighting.
Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism looks at what is needed to create a totalitarian state - people who are too lazy or frightened to push back and fight back. Writing over half a century ago Arendt provides an important reminder that we need to remain vigilant against the power of the state. Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam chronicles the rise and rise of Islam in Europe as a result of policies that no European voter voted for. Finally, Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity and Hans Roslings posthumously published Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things…show that the world is actually a much nicer place than we realise and that violence has decreased and prosperity has increased over time by nearly every measure both on a macro and micro scale.
The full list is below:
The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and HumanitySteven Pinker
A Monk's Guide to Happiness: Meditation in the 21st Century
Gelong Thubten, Yellow Kite
The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity
Murray, Douglas
Fukuyama, Francis
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About The World - And Why Things…
Hans Rosling
Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities
Kaufmann, Eric
Peters, Prof Steve
How to Be a Dictator: The Cult of Personality in the Twentieth Century
Dikötter, Frank
The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist's Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults
Jensen, Frances E.
Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue: The Untold Story of English
John McWhorter,
Social: Why our brains are wired to connect
Lieberman, Matthew D.
Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past
Reich, David
Anthony, David W.
Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress
Pinker, Steven
The Great Ideas of Philosophy, 2nd Edition
Daniel N. Robinson, The Great Courses
Paul Nielsen
The Consolation of Philosophy (Oxford World's Classics)
Boethius
The Gulag Archipelago [Abridged] (Harvill Press Editions)
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Peterson, Jordan B.
The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam
Douglas Murray
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Harari, Yuval Noah
Nailed: Ten Christian Myths That Show Jesus Never Existed At All
David Fitzgerald
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth
Reza Aslan
Fischer, Tristan
John Locke
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Hobbes: Leviathan: Revised student edition (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)
Tuck, Richard
Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others (Oxford World's Classics)
Dalley, Stephanie
Most Likely to Succeed: Preparing Our Kids for the Innovation Era
Wagner, Tony
Simon Hawthorne
36 Books That Changed the World
The Great Courses
The Good Book: A Secular Bible
A. C. Grayling
The Establishment: And how they get away with it
Jones, Owen
The Republic: The Influential Classic (Capstone Classics)
Plato
Shapeshifters: Tales from Ovid's Metamorphoses
Mitchell, Adrian
Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World
Stanley McChrystal
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
Haidt, Jonathan
On the Shortness of Life (Penguin Great Ideas)
Seneca
The Road Not Taken: How Britain Narrowly Missed a Revolution, 1381-1926
McLynn, Frank
Fernandez-Armesto, Felipe
A. N. Wilson
Paul: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions Book 42)
E. P. Sanders
30-Second Philosophies: The 50 Most Thought-provoking Philosophies, Each Explained in Half a Minute
Stephen Law, Julian Baggini, Barry Loewer
The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence In History And Its Causes
Steven Pinker
30-second Theories: The 50 Most Thought-provoking Theories in Science
Paul Parsons, Martin Rees, Susan Blackmore, Christian Jarrett
Robert Graves
Richard Herley
A History of the World in 100 Objects
Neil MacGregor
Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House
Mark Halperin, John Heilemann
Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam and the West
Christopher Caldwell
The History of Britain Revealed: The Shocking Truth About the English Language
M. J. Harper
Bart D. Ehrman
Whose Word is It?: The Story Behind Who Changed the New Testament and Why
Bart D. Ehrman
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
Nicholas Ostler
The Stuff of Thought:: Language as a Window into Human Nature (Penguin Press Science)
Steven Pinker
Sam Harris (Author)
Karen Armstrong (Author)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia
John Gray (Author)
Pope Benedict XVI (Author)
Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health
L.Ron Hubbard (Author)
Who Are We?: America's Great Debate
Samuel P. Huntington (Author)
The Truth about Muhammad: Founder of the World's Most Intolerant Religion
Robert Spencer (Author)
Oriana Fallaci (Author)
Understanding Power: The Indispensable Chomsky
Noam Chomsky (Author)
N.J. Dawood (Translator)
The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West
Toby E. Huff (Author)
Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), The
Robert Spencer (Author)
The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail
Richard Leigh, et al
The Origins of Totalitarianism
Hannah Arendt
John Holt
Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A's, Praise and Other Bribes
Alfie Kohn
Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr
Stephen B. Oates
The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus
Lee Strobel
When Jesus Became God: The Struggle to Define Christianity During the Last Days of Rome
Richard E. Rubenstein, Michelle Brook (Editor)
Bart D. Ehrman
The Affluent Society (Penguin Business)
John Kenneth Galbraith (Introduction)
